Opposition fighters sit on the front line in the Jubaila neighborhood of Syria's northeastern city of Deir Ezzor on Oct. 13, 2013. / Ahmad Aboud, AFP/Getty Images

by USA TODAY

by USA TODAY

GENEVA (AP) - Officials say a Syrian Arab Red Crescent volunteer and three of six Red Cross staffers taken hostage in Syria are free and safe.

Robert Mardini, the International Committee of the Red Cross' head of operations for the Middle East, said on Twitter that the four were released "safe and sound."

The ICRC's Geneva office confirmed the tweet was accurate, but provided no more details Monday.

Gunmen abducted the seven on Sunday after stopping their convoy in northwestern Syria.

Simon Schorno, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Damascus, said over the weekend the assailants snatched the seven aid workers from their convoy near the town of Saraqeb in Idlib province around 11:30 a.m. local time as the team was returning to Damascus. He declined to provide the nationalities of the six ICRC employees, and said it was not clear who was behind the attack.

Syria's state news agency, quoting an anonymous official, said the gunmen opened fire on the ICRC team's four vehicles before seizing the Red Cross workers. The news agency blamed "terrorists," a term the government uses to refer to those opposed to President Bashar Assad.

Schorno said the team of seven had been in the field since Oct. 10 to assess the medical situation in the area and to look at how to provide medical aid. He said the part of northern Syria where they were seized "by definition is a difficult area to go in," and the team was traveling with armed guards.

Much of the countryside in Idlib province, as well as the rest of northern Syria, has fallen over the past year into the hands of rebels, many of them Islamic extremists, and kidnappings have become rife, particularly of aid workers and foreign journalists.

Press freedom advocate Reporters without Borders calls Syria "the most dangerous country in the world" for journalists, with 25 reporters killed and at least 33 imprisoned since the anti-Assad uprising began in March 2011.

The conflict also has taken a toll on the aid community. The ICRC said in August that 22 Syrian Red Crescent volunteers have been killed in the country since the conflict began. Some were deliberately targeted, while others killed in crossfire, the group said.

Syria's bloody conflict has killed more than 100,000 people, forced more than 2 million Syrians to flee the country and caused untold suffering - psychological, emotional and physical - across the nation.

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